


Checking In

by Aini_NuFire



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Between Episodes, Castiel (Supernatural) Whump, Family, Gen, Hunt Gone Wrong, Hurt Castiel, Hurt/Comfort, One Shot, Season/Series 14, Worried Jack, Worried Winchesters (Supernatural), lots of heart to hearts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-14
Updated: 2018-11-14
Packaged: 2019-08-23 15:04:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,216
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16621262
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aini_NuFire/pseuds/Aini_NuFire
Summary: It’s about time they set up a system for checking in. So when Cas and Jack miss a scheduled report, Sam and Dean immediately head out to find them. And even then, they’re almost too late.





	Checking In

**Author's Note:**

> This started out as a simple scenario in response to the fact that Sam has a system for his hunters to check in, and ended up with some gratuitous Cas whump.
> 
> Disclaimer: Not mine. Thanks to 29Pieces for beta reading! I'm sorry it's like running a marathon, lol.

 

Dean gave Sam a hard time, but even he had to admit his brother had a pretty decent operation going here. Yeah, it was weird having all these strangers living and working in the bunker, and Sam was barely taking care of himself worrying about everyone else, but some of the things he'd set up that seemed a little over the top had proven to be a good thing. Like when they'd saved Maggie.

Like now, when Sam was looking at his phone with that pinched expression after one of his alerts went off.

"Someone else miss a check-in?" Dean asked. Part of him still wanted to make a jab that Sam was being a helicopter mom, but shit hit the fan for all of them, and backup was something the Winchesters could have used on a number of occasions. It just took a little more getting used to.

Sam's mouth pressed into a thin line. "Cas and Jack."

Dean automatically stiffened. "What? Wait, you have Cas checking in too?"

Sam shot him a wry look. "After all the kidnappings and dropping off the grid? Yeah."

Dean couldn't argue with that. He'd already had that talk with the wayward angel about not going dark on them, and Cas had been pretty good about it. Well, half of that had been Asmodeus pretending to be him…

"He wearing a body cam too?"

Sam huffed. "No." His expression tightened. "So I have no way to check what they went up against. They were on a case in Torrence, Kansas. Sounded like witches."

"Awesome," Dean muttered. "Okay, well, they're not far. You pull up the GPS in their phones?"

Sam made a few clicks on his laptop. "Not currently transmitting."

Crap, that wasn't good. Cas should have been able to handle some witches. Unless…could Michael have souped up some of them, too? Dean couldn't remember.

He turned sharply toward the door. "Let's go."

* * *

The drive didn't take long, but Dean couldn't help feeling antsy throughout it. Sam had kept checking Cas's and Jack's phones, but neither had turned back on.

"So what brought them here in the first place?" Dean asked.

"Spontaneous combustion."

Dean frowned. "And that spelled witches?"

"A fire reportedly erupted out of nowhere in the middle of an intersection. It quickly engulfed the surrounding buildings and completely destroyed them. The fire department couldn't put it out, like the fire was fighting back. And then it suddenly stopped and died down."

Okay, that definitely didn't sound like any other kind of monster. But setting fire in the middle of town? That was a bit big scale for witches.

"Cas and Jack make any progress?"

"Cas had called to ask Roger to check traffic camera footage of the intersection. Roger said he hadn't seen anything, but he'd sent it to Cas and that was the last we'd heard," Sam replied. He shook his head. "I should have called to check in."

"When?" Dean retorted. "Between coordinating all the other hunters' seventeen cases you said you've got going on? During those three hours you're barely sleeping? You're already doing everything you can, Sam. You can't take it all on."

"Their lives are my responsibility."

"First off, Cas isn't a rookie. And he may be reckless, but he wouldn't do anything to jeopardize Jack."

"Which just means that something bad must have happened to them."

Dean held up a finger. "Second, these are grown-ass people who survived a war. Yeah, they need some training and organization is helpful, but this leads me to my third point—not everything that goes wrong is your fault." He glanced over at his brother as Sam looked away. "I mean it, Sam."

Sam shook his head in mounting frustration. "It's my job to prepare them for what's coming."

"We don't know what's coming," Dean rejoined. "Monsters are setting traps for hunters, okay. And now they've got super powers from Michael, but there's no way to prepare for that. We're all out of our depth here. But we all choose to keep fighting, no matter what comes. That's something these people know well. It's the choice they made back in apocalypse world, and it's the choice they made here. Yeah, they could get hurt or killed, but I like their chances a hell of a lot better in this world than the one they came from."

Sam stewed in silence for several moments before finally letting out a tense breath. "I'm just…tired of losing people. Cas, Mom, Jack. You. I can't keep going through that."

Dean's throat constricted. Yeah, he was tired of that, too.

"We never stop looking for each other," he said. "Like now. We're gonna find Cas and Jack and get them out of whatever mess they landed in. Because that's what we do." Dean met Sam's gaze. "So let's take a look at the footage and see what Cas might have found."

* * *

Castiel's back ached where he lay on the cold, hard concrete, but he couldn't move to try alleviating some of the pressure. His legs all the way up to his mid thighs had gone numb where they were pinned under a slab of concrete and other rubble from the ceiling caving in.

A skittering of shale drew his attention to the right where Jack was picking at the debris blocking the only exit to the underground tornado shelter. But it was packed tight, and there was no way he'd be able to manually unbury them. Castiel could even see that his hands were bloody from handling the sharp stone and detritus.

"Jack," he called.

Jack turned and hurried over, dropping down next to him and reaching for his shoulder. "Do you need something? Are you in pain?"

"I'm fine." Castiel lifted a hand to lay it over the boy's wrist. "You should take a break."

Jack's expression tightened staunchly. "I have to get you out of here."

"Someone will come looking for us soon," Castiel replied. "We've missed our check-in."

"They won't even know where to find us."

That, unfortunately, was accurate. Jack's phone wasn't able to get a signal down here, which meant Castiel's probably couldn't, either, though it was currently in his pants pocket and unreachable, possibly even broken. Which meant not only could they not call for help, but their location wasn't traceable. That wouldn't stop the Winchesters, though.

"Sam and Dean are quite capable," Castiel reassured him. "They'll retrace our steps on this case and find us eventually."

"And how long could that be?" Jack argued. "Days? A week? You can't stay like this that long." His gaze flitted over Castiel's condition. "If I had my powers, I could move this stupid slab."

Castiel sighed. "If I had my wings, I could fly myself out from under it. I could fly us both out of here."

His eyes shifted to Jack's scraped hands morosely. He also couldn't heal Jack. With Heaven dying, Castiel couldn't summon its powers of healing and smiting. It was essentially the same as when he'd been cut off during the Apocalypse. He was barely able to heal himself these days. Which, he had to admit, might prove problematic the longer he was trapped like this. Not to mention Jack was even more on the mortal side, and days without food and water would be even more detrimental to him.

Jack's mouth was pressed into a thin line of displeasure. Castiel wished he could sit up and look the boy in the eye.

"Jack, listen, even without your powers, you did a great job today. We stopped those witches and saved the town."

When they'd identified the coven behind the fire and tracked them down, they'd discovered the witches were trying to harness the powers of elementals. Castiel and Jack had arrived at the house in time to find them in the tornado shelter, summoning up a twister powerful enough to wipe out the whole town. Armed with an angel blade and witch-killing bullets, Castiel and Jack had charged in and swiftly and efficiently taken them out.

Unfortunately, the intense magic they'd been in the middle of channeling had nowhere to go except to explode violently, collapsing part of the underground shelter and trapping them. Jack had luckily avoided serious injury. Castiel, on the other hand, could feel the fractures in both his legs that his grace couldn't heal even if it was capable, not with the heavy debris still crushing them. All he could do was stave off complications—and even that would only hold out for so long.

"Sometimes it doesn't matter how many powers you have," Castiel said with another sigh. "You will eventually find yourself up against a force more powerful than you."

Jack was quiet for a moment, then said, "That bigger force shouldn't be a bunch of rock. Not for us."

"True," Castiel said ruefully. "Although, to be fair, the bunch of rock was brought down by some very powerful magic. And that's not your fault. Or mine. It just is."

Jack fell silent after that. But a few minutes later, he got up and went back to trying to dig their way out of the debris.

Castiel lolled his gaze to the collapsed ceiling and clenched his fists at his helplessness.

* * *

Sam trolled for a spot of WiFi, and when he found one, Dean stopped the car and they sat there while Sam pulled up the traffic camera footage that Roger had sent Cas. There were several angles of the fire just erupting in the middle of the intersection, and then it slithering out to engulf the nearby buildings. All but one.

Dean leaned over the bench seat after they'd watched it a few times. "Can you enlarge that?"

"Yeah, I see it." Sam swiped his fingers across the screen, zooming in.

Through the paned glass of one of the buildings that didn't catch fire, Sam could make out the slightly blurred figures of three women standing in a circle, arms spread slightly to the sides. Definitely looked like witchcraft.

Sam skipped ahead to when the fires were out and when the camera caught the women leaving. They rounded the corner and climbed into a red Civic coupe. Sam paused the video and zoomed in on the license plate.

"Okay, hacking DMV for registration…"

"Cas didn't call back to headquarters with help on that?" Dean asked.

Sam shook his head. "He learned back when we were looking for Metatron, remember?"

"Oh. Guess I wasn't sure it had stuck, what with him slowly going mad from Rowena's curse."

Sam's jaw tightened. Yeah. That wasn't something he liked to be reminded of. Just yet another way he'd put someone in the crossfire.

Sam made a few clacks on the keyboard and leaned back. "Okay, got it. Meredith Paisley. Here's the address." He turned the screen toward Dean.

"Out on the edge of town. Great." Dean put the Impala back in gear and pulled onto the street again.

Sam was a tight coil of tension, wondering what they'd find when they got there. It used to be that he didn't have to worry about Cas, because Cas was an angel and he was always fine. Or, well, he always recovered from whatever beating he'd taken. But things had changed after he'd…died. And Sam knew Cas was running low on power again. They'd discussed it once, when Dean had still been MIA with Michael, and Cas had said that there was nothing to be done about it, so Sam hadn't brought it up again. But he'd started worrying more about Cas, because Jack was already human, Dean was gone, and Sam couldn't bear to lose anyone else.

He was trying so hard to keep everyone safe and alive, while still doing the job, and even though he knew Dean was right and he couldn't control everything, he was damn well going to try.

It was dark by the time they arrived at the address. The Impala's headlights bobbed across the ground, illuminating the vehicle Cas had borrowed from the bunker for his and Jack's hunting trip. Sam stiffened as Dean pulled up alongside it, but he couldn't see anyone inside.

They climbed out, immediately checking the vehicle more closely and then doing a survey of the area. The house was dark.

"Dammit," Sam muttered.

"Don't jump to conclusions, Sammy." Dean pulled out his flashlight and flicked it on. "Cas and Jack obviously tracked the witches here. Maybe the bitches ran off and they went after them."

Sam's gut was telling him differently, but he didn't say anything. The two of them cautiously approached the house and tested the door. It wasn't locked, so they ventured inside to take a look around.

There were tons of witch paraphernalia in the kitchen, but no sign of the witches themselves. Sam paused to look at a book left open on the table. The page was on elementals. So that must have been how they'd started the fire.

Sam briefly scanned the ingredients on the counter and noted that some matched the fire channeling in the book, but several others matched the one for air.

Dean came back into the kitchen. "No one's here."

Sam worked his jaw as he considered the materials in front of him. "Think this place has a storm cellar?"

Dean briefly flicked his gaze over the stuff, though not long enough to really take it in. He shrugged and headed back out the door. Sam followed. They made their way around the back of the house, and sure enough, there was a door to a storm shelter wide open on the ground. There wasn't any light emitting from within, though, which did not bode well for anyone being in there, either.

Except as they got closer, the flashlight beams illuminated what looked like something blocking the stairs down into the shelter. Sam's eyes widened in dismay when he realized it was rubble. How the hell had a storm cellar collapsed? Those things were meant to withstand tornados, and there hadn't been any reports of one in the area.

But, the witches were trying to harness elementals… And if Cas and Jack had cornered the witches down there and the fight had somehow ended with the exit being caved in, that would explain why they'd gone off the grid.

The only question was whether Cas and Jack were just trapped, or worse…

* * *

Jack gripped Castiel's shoulder as the angel gritted his teeth against another pained grunt. It'd started twenty minutes ago, and Jack had no idea what to do or what exactly was wrong. Castiel had mentioned a sharp pain in his leg, but had tried to brush it off, until it'd escalated to the point that he could barely keep from crying out every few minutes. And all Jack could do was sit there, helplessly watching his dad struggle under each increasing wave of agony.

"Jack," Castiel panted between strained breaths. "Did you hear that?"

"Hear what?"

Castiel turned his head toward the blocked stairs. "I think…someone's out there."

Jack scrambled to his feet and rushed over. "Hello?" he shouted. "Is anyone there? Help!"

He pressed himself against the rubble, but couldn't hear anything. Maybe Castiel was imagining it…

No, Jack heard a scraping sound then, followed by a muffled voice.

" _Jack?_ "

"Sam!"

" _Oh thank god. Are you okay?_ "

"I'm fine, but you have to get us out. Cas is hurt and he's trapped under some concrete. I can't get him out."

" _How bad?_ " Dean's voice jumped in, and Jack felt an immense wave of relief that he was there too.

Jack looked back toward Castiel, whose eyes were squeezed shut under another assault of pain. "I don't know," he yelled through the debris. "His legs are pinned and I can't see, but you have to hurry!"

" _Okay, okay,_ " Dean called back. " _We're gonna get you out._ "

" _Jack,_ " Sam shouted. " _There's too much rubble. We're gonna have to get an excavator._ "

Jack's heart leaped into his throat. "How long is that going to take?"

There was a beat of silence before Dean responded,

" _We'll go as fast as we can. Is Cas near the entrance?_ "

"No…"

" _Okay, good. Don't want to drop more shit on you guys when we start digging you out. Just stay with him and we'll be back as soon as we can._ "

Jack knew they were going to retrieve something to help get them out, but he couldn't help but feel a crushing wave of abandonment.

He turned away from the blocked tunnel and went back to Castiel, sitting down next to him and taking his hand. Castiel blinked his eyes open to look up at him.

"Sam and Dean are here," he said. "You were right, they found us."

Castiel tried to smile, though it came out more like a grimace. "I told you we can always count on them."

Jack nodded. He sat in fretful silence, broken only by Castiel's strangled sounds, and Jack would hold on as Castiel squeezed his hand hard until the pain passed. And then finally he heard what sounded like grinding machinery above, and the rubble near the door started to shake. Jack scooted around in front of Castiel to shield him, just in case some of it came loose and tumbled toward them.

It took another twenty-five minutes for the excavator to break through, and at long last, Sam and Dean came picking their way through the rubble into the cellar.

"Jack!" Sam called.

"Here!"

"Hey…oh man."

Sam and Dean both pulled up short at the sight of Cas.

"We have to get him out," Jack urged.

"Yeah, yeah," Dean said, moving forward and kneeling down next to Castiel's head. "Hey, buddy. How you doing?"

Castiel made a garbled noise in his throat. "My legs…" He sucked in a sharp gasp.

"Sam," Dean said, and somehow that meant something else, because then the Winchesters were simultaneously examining the rubble from every angle they could.

"Can't you just bring that excavator down here?" Jack asked impatiently.

"Too big," Dean replied. "I think we can get a jack in here." He pointed, and Sam leaned over to look.

"Yeah. We'll have to reinforce this spot so the whole thing doesn't come down."

Jack had no idea what they were talking about, but he assumed it was important, even though he wanted to tell them to hurry up.

Dean turned to sweep his gaze around the cellar. "The witches?"

"Dead," Jack said, nodding to the back where their bodies were. He'd shot two with the witch-killing bullets while Castiel had killed the third with his angel blade. Before everything went to hell.

Dean nodded in approval, then pushed himself to his feet. "I'll get the tools."

As he left, Sam started sifting through some of the loose rubble until he found a thick chunk of concrete, and then he wedged it under part of the debris pile.

"Hang in there, Cas," he coaxed. "We're gonna have you out in a minute."

Castiel just nodded his head, jaw clenched.

Dean returned with a tool Jack had seem him use on the Impala, and he reluctantly stepped away from Castiel while the Winchesters set it up. Sam also grabbed some rebar.

"Jack, when we get this lifted, can you pull him out?"

Jack instantly nodded, and positioned himself at Cas's head, bending down to grip him under the shoulders. Dean started cranking up the jack, and Sam wedged the rebar under another section of the slab to add extra leverage.

As the debris shifted, Castiel bit back a strangled cry. Jack wanted to pull him out now, but they didn't have the clearance yet.

"Now," Dean suddenly said, and Jack hauled as hard as he could.

Castiel couldn't hold back a scream this time. Jack made sure his legs were clear before easing him down and dropping to his knees.

"Cas?"

Castiel was choking on a groan as Sam and Dean scrambled over.

"Shit," Dean murmured.

Castiel's slacks were torn and Jack could see some blood. The left was extremely swollen compared to the right.

Sam fingered a slit in the pants and ripped it open further to expose the injury underneath. He sucked in a sharp breath. The left leg was completely black and blue, darker near the bottom.

"That's compartment syndrome," he said.

"What's that?" Jack asked, alarmed by the look on Sam's face.

"Pressure buildup from internal bleeding." Sam shot Cas a terrified look.

"You can heal that, right?" Dean asked with a note of worry.

Castiel gritted his teeth. "Not…immediately. My powers are severely diminished with Heaven's depleted powers."

Dean blanched. "Then we need to get you to a hospital."

"No. I will heal. Eventually."

Sam and Dean exchanged a look.

"Fine," Dean said. "We'll get to a motel." His mouth tightened with grim resignation. "This is gonna hurt like hell."

Castiel lifted his head to look toward the stairs, which were open but still lined with debris that would make navigating around it difficult. "I know. Help me up."

Sam and Dean moved in to grip Castiel under the arms, and together they hefted him up. Jack cringed at the strangled cry Cas made when he put weight on his right leg, which was also broken.

"We should carry him," Sam said.

"And who's gonna grab his legs?" Dean retorted. "Either way, this isn't gonna be a picnic."

"I can make it," Castiel panted.

A muscle in Sam's cheek ticked, but he didn't argue as they started shuffling their way toward the exit. Jack followed behind, unsure how to help. At least they were finally getting out. And Cas said he'd be fine, so he would be…

But his agonized grunts were more than Jack could take by the time they reached the cars and the Winchesters laid Castiel down in the backseat of the Impala, straightening out his legs, which drew forth more strangled screams.

"You have the keys for the other car?" Sam asked.

Cas nodded jerkily. "Ri-right pocket."

Sam gave him an apologetic look as he reached over to pull them out. "I'll find us a motel," he said to Dean, who nodded.

Jack hurried around to climb into the front passenger seat as Dean slid behind the wheel and started up the engine. Then they followed Sam down the drive and onto the road.

Jack glanced into the backseat where Cas had his eyes squeezed shut as he tried to breathe through the pain. "I'm sorry," he said quietly.

"For what?" Dean asked, shooting him a side look.

"For not being able to get him out."

Dean shook his head. "You and Sam, man. This wasn't your fault, kid. You think me or Sam would have been able to get each other out if it'd been us?"

"You did get him out."

"After we stole an excavator from a construction site a few miles away. And we did it without special powers. You have to give yourself a break, Jack. You're doing the best you can, and your best is good enough."

Jack fell silent. He wanted to believe that. It was just hard sometimes, when he used to be better.

Sam pulled over into a motel parking lot, and Dean followed suit. This late at night, they were the only ones checking in, and the clerk in the main office looked half asleep through the window as he laid his head down right after Sam had gotten a room. Then came a second excruciating journey as the Winchesters pulled Castiel from the backseat and half carried, half dragged him into the room. Once they laid him on the closest bed, Sam immediately inspected his left leg again. It didn't look marginally better at all.

Sam pulled out his phone and started looking at something while Jack went over and sat on the other bed, facing Cas. Dean ran a hand down his jaw.

"Okay," Sam finally said. "We need to relieve the pressure by making an incision and draining the blood."

Jack whipped his head up at that.

"That's- not- necessary," Cas said haltingly.

Sam's expression darkened. "It's this or a hospital. Because you are not healing and we can't leave it."

"I just need…time."

"The worse it gets, the harder it's gonna be for your diminished grace to fix it at all, right?" Sam rejoined firmly. "Your choice."

Cas grew quiet at that, and thunked his head back against the pillow.

"Field surgery it is," Dean concluded grimly.

He and Sam immediately started moving about, getting out first aid supplies from their duffel and retrieving all the towels in the bathroom.

Jack looked between them anxiously. "What can I do to help?"

Sam paused for a brief moment, flicking a grave look at Cas. "Help hold him down."

Jack's stomach cramped at that, but he moved closer to the bed anyway. Sam got out a scalpel and packed a bunch of towels around Castiel's leg. Dean removed his belt and folded it in half before putting it between Cas's teeth.

Dean met Cas's gaze. "Ready?"

Castiel gave a staunch nod, and Sam made the cut. Cas threw his head back, garbled cries making their way past the belt in his mouth. Sam had one hand firmly pressing down on Castiel's ankle, and he yelled at Jack to grab his thigh as Castiel tried to buck. Jack jumped in, cringing with every sound that Cas made and knowing he was adding to some of that agony.

He watched dark blood pour out onto the towels and his stomach gave a flip at the sight. And then Castiel's cries stopped and he fell limp.

"Cas?" Jack called in alarm.

"Finally," Dean muttered and removed the belt from Castiel's slack mouth, then glanced at Jack. "It's better this way."

Sam finished bleeding the leg, and then set to cleaning it up, and he and Dean wrapped it tightly with multiple layers of gauze, and Jack knew that process would have been equally awful for Castiel with the broken bones.

Sam took the bloody towels away, and then Dean was standing in front of Jack and saying it was time to patch him up. Jack's gaze drifted down to his scraped hands. He'd forgotten about them.

Dean gave him a sympathetic look as he guided him over to the table and sat him in one of the chairs. Then he began to clean and disinfect the abrasions. Jack watched him wipe away the smears of human blood, and thought of all the ways each of them were, when it came down to it, mortal.

* * *

Dean sat in a chair by the motel bed, watching the steady rise and fall of Cas's chest. Over the past five hours, he'd kept an eye on the leg to make sure it didn't take a turn for the worse again. But the internal bleeding seemed to have slowed significantly, and the discoloration had begun to fade, signaling healing was finally happening.

It was just approaching dawn when Cas's face scrunched up with the beginnings of wakefulness. Dean waited the few seconds it took for the angel to finally get his eyes open and blink blearily at his surroundings.

"Hey," Dean whispered. "How you doing?"

Cas looked at Dean, then lifted his head a fraction to glance down at his lower extremities. He dropped back against the pillow. "Better," he whispered hoarsely. "The internal injuries are healed, and the bones are almost done fusing back together."

Dean nodded, relieved.

Cas lolled his head toward the other side where Jack was sitting in the other chair, his head pillowed on his arms next to Cas's hip, one hand resting on Cas's forearm.

Cas's expression softened. "He should be in the other bed," he chided.

"Kid didn't want to leave your side," Dean replied. "Besides, Sam takes up the whole thing."

Cas shifted his gaze to look at the other bed where Sam was sprawled out, pretty much dead to the world.

"This is the longest night's sleep he's gotten in weeks," Dean remarked, keeping his voice low.

Cas turned back to him with that penetrating gaze of his. "You didn't sleep at all," he murmured knowingly.

"Someone had to keep an eye on that leg."

"I told you I'd heal."

"And I'm calling bullshit." Dean leaned forward with his arms on his thighs. "It took you all night to heal a few broken bones, Cas. I know Heaven's not doing well and your mojo is tied to that, but how are you really doing?"

Cas looked away, and after a moment said regretfully, "I don't know. I don't know what will happen if Heaven eventually fails. Besides all the souls being thrown down to Earth, I mean."

"Yeah, got that part," Dean muttered. "And you?"

Cas sighed and gazed up at the ceiling. "I imagine I'll lose all my powers and become human."

Dean ran a hand down his face. Yeah, that was a good guess. He still remembered that apocalyptic future where Cas had become human after all the angels left and sealed Heaven.

Like they didn't have enough problems to deal with.

"Okay, well, quit playing the tough-it-out card. I'm not gonna risk you bleeding out because you're too stubborn to admit you're sliding more toward human these days. And isn't that what you've been trying to tell Jack?"

Cas at least had the grace to look abashed. But then his gaze sharpened and he countered, "And how are you doing? Really? Because that tough-it-out card will only carry you so far."

Dean wanted to deny it, like he'd been doing ever since Michael had vacated his body. But at that moment, he just found himself too tired to bother.

"I'm still struggling," he admitted quietly. "I tell Sam he can't blame himself for things out of his control, but I don't know how to do the same."

Cas's eyes held nothing but empathy and understanding. "We all have a guilt complex," he said commiseratively. "I suppose it comes from caring so much."

"I can't let it go."

Cas looked contemplative for a moment. "Maybe not yet," he said. "But you're strong. You won't drown in this. Sam and I won't let you."

Dean's throat constricted at the word choice and the memory of being underwater, suffocating. His instinct was to throw up that macho wall, but he took a moment to pause and make the conscious decision to accept the gesture for what it was.

Dean looked over at his brother, for once sleeping deeply. "Yeah," he whispered. "Same for you two. And Jack."

The corners of Cas's mouth lifted in a small smile. Then he shifted. "I think I'm ready to get up."

Of course, that slightest movement instantly woke Jack, who jolted upright and whipped his head toward Cas.

"Cas! Are you alright?"

"Shh," Dean warned, throwing a pointed look toward Sam.

"I'm fine," Cas assured him in a whisper. "I'm mostly healed now. How are you?"

"I'm okay." Jack's eyes softened. "Our family came for us."

Cas exchanged a knowing look with Dean, who felt a measure of warmth blossom in his chest in the cold spot Michael had left.

Their family always came for each other.


End file.
